(The neighbours)

We stayed in Mafra again last night but this time at the aire beside the Palace. We didn’t notice it on the way in but here it is and here we are. As we hadn’t had electricity for two days and the drive from Mafra suburb to the Palace wasn’t enough to charge the battery we were running dangerously low on power.

(Beautiful sky over Mafra)

When I got back from visiting the palace I uploaded photos with only 20% battery and by the time I sent the blog post to WordPress I had only 6%. There are some electrical connections at this aire but they were all in use. We talked to the couple next to us from Italy (getting away from the snow there…) who said they were leaving today so if we could just hobble through overnight then we could use theirs and we’d be in clover.

(Window at the Palace)

Ten minutes later the battery alarm light went off… that never happened before. Unplug everything. There was only the wifi router so I unplugged it, soon we would have no wifi…. how would we know what the weather was like…? We made plans for the move in the morning but there were very few aires within 50km of Lisbon with electricity. Time for a walk.

(I love the windows at the Palace)

And that’s when we noticed the empty space. All the camper van spaces had been taken except one which we took when we arrived and when I got back from the Palace they were still occupied. But now a few hours later there was one… and it was beside an electricity connection!

(The view of Mafra from the King’s balcony at the Palace)

We looked at each other and then ran back to the van (who am I kidding, we walked back to the van) and even faster than the night of the flooding river we had moved to the spot with the electricity. We have electricity! The electricity is free! We plugged in the wifi and the laptops and went for our walk. The rain stopped.

We really are in clover, Mairead.